The 30th International Cappelle La Grande is going to take place 1st-8th March, 2014. With more than 150(!) titled players, it will be one of the most significant opens of the year. Top seeded is the 2700 club member GM Ding Liren. His main opponents for the first position will be GMs Viktor Erdos, Eduardo Iturrizaga, Parimarjan Negi, Andrey Sumets, Abhijeet Gupta, Surya Shekhar Ganguly, Martyn Kravtsiv, Chanda Sandipan, Alexandr Fier, etc.

Games will be daily live on Chessdom Arena with analysis by the top 3 engines from TCEC – Komodo, Houdini, and Stockfish.

At second position is the top seeded player of the Candidates Tournament 2014, Levon Aronian. He gained 4 points to climb to 2830 ELO. With Magnus gaining 11, the distance between the two players increased to 51 points, despite their draw in Zurich Chess 2014.

At positions 3 and 4 are two more participants in the Candidates tournament – Vladimir Kramnik and Veselin Topalov. They were inactive during the month of February and maintained their ratings of 2787 and 2785 respectively.

Fabiano Caruana is fifth, gaining two ELO points from his participation in Zurich. Top 10 is completed by Alexander Grischuk, Hikaru Nakamura, Viswanathan Anand, Sergey Karjakin, and the first time top 10 entrant Maxime Vachier-Lagrave. His beautiful games in Gibraltar 2014 gave him the needed push to be the 10th highest rated player on the March FIDE rating list.

A notable rising star is Denis Khismatullin who gained 16 points, he highest gain in the period, and joined the 2700 club.

On February 25-26 the FIDE President arrived on a working visit to Nicaragua where he met with the President of NOC Emmett Lang Salmeron. President Ilyumzhinov told about FIDE’s activities, its main objectives and programmes and the efforts that the FIDE is undertaking to become a part of the Olympic family, he addressed to Mr. Salmeron to support this endeavor. Mr. Emmett Salmeron, who is the Head of the Olympic National Committees of Central America, promised not only to support this idea but also he intends to discuss this issue at the forthcoming meeting with the IOC President Mr. Thomas Bach. At the meeting also present were Mr. Jorge Vega, Continental President for Americas, Guy Jose Bendana-Guerrero, President of Nicaragua CF, Berik Balgabaev, FIDE President’s Assistant, Victor Popovich and Ilya Nesterov, officials of the Russian Embassy in Managua. The meeting was followed by the press conference.

After NOC the FIDE President visited the Chess Academy, named after him, where he met with the leadership of Nicaragua CF. The Presidents played chess before having a long and detailed discussion on how to overcome the problems of chess development in Nicaragua, cooperation between FIDE and the country’s national federation.

Mr. Bendana-Guerrero also suggested to introduce a new title – National Master. He believes that it will help to raise the interest to the game in poor chess developed countries. A more detailed suggestion will be sent to FIDE office for its consideration at the PB meeting.

In Managua President Ilyumzhinov also met with the Russian Ambassador to Nicaragua Mr. Nikolai Vladimir, President of Costa Rica CF Mr. Mauricio Castro, and Vice President of Panama CF Mr. Jose Carrillo. Also the FIDE President met with the Executive Director of the Sport Institute of Nicaragua Mr. Marlon Torres. President Ilyumzhinov informed on his meetings with Presidents of NOC and chess federation of Nicaragua, and the Russian Ambassador to Nicaragua Mr. Nikolai Vladimir.

In particular at the meeting was also discussed the idea of Russian Ambassador to review the possibility of making Nicaragua a regional center for retraining the Arbiters and Trainers, and sending the student for studying at the Russian State Academy of Physical Culture. Another important issue discussed by both sides was the CiS programme. The head of Nicaraguan sport is ready to render assistance in this matter.

Why are some kids so good at chess? How do some chess prodigies that are barely 8,7 or even 6 years old manage to play chess at a master level with little formal chess coaching? How have they managed to accelerate their intellectual development in this specific field at such an exceptional rate? How can we learn from these prodigies and their secrets that we can use to teach better chess to all children? It is difficult to determine exactly which cultural, biological, and/or environmental factor plays the greatest role in this phenomenon.

Samuel Reshevsky, Bobby Fischer & More …

8 yr-old Reshevsky dominates simul

In the early 20th century, Samuel Reshevsky began dominating simultaneous exhibitions against experienced masters before he turned 10. In 1958, Bobby Fischer won the US Championship when he was only 14. Yet these achievements have been overshadowed by the increasing number of child prodigies who are becoming the dominant force in the changing face of modern chess. The term chess prodigy traditionally referred to a young master who was competing on equal footing with experienced professionals, however in the 21st century a true prodigy must be a junior that is capable of competing for the World Championship in the near future.

Human’s haven’t evolved too much in the last 100 years so we must look to cultural and environmental factors to explain this type of elite specialization. Well before having children, Laszlo Polgar wrote Bring Up Genius! where he explained “Genius equals work and fortunate circumstances” and “Geniuses are made, not born”. Laszlo went on to prove his theory by raising three exceptional female chess players – Susan Polgar achieved the GM title at 21, Judit Polgar at 15, and sister Sofia is a strong IM. While Laszlo certainly maintains an above-average IQ, biological predisposition alone cannot explain these results. The Polgar sisters developed their impressive chess skills in a favorable environment conducive to very diligent, hard work.

Lots of Tutoring or Naturally Gifted? – The 10,000 Hour Rule

The article Developing Young Chess Masters: What are the Best Moves? by Kiewra & O’Connor presents a detailed study confirming hard work and a positive environment are necessary requisites to create genius in chess. Referring to young chess masters, they state “These youngsters, on average, practiced chess about 20 hours per week for eight years before attaining master status. Even if they were born with incredible gifts, it still required about 8,000 practice hours to realize those gifts.” That doesn’t quite meet the criteria for Malcolm Gladwell’s “10,000 Hour Rule”, however this estimate certainly comes close. Practice alone is not enough, it must occur in a favorable environment to achieve optimal results. The article also discusses the financial investment parents make “Most spend about $5,000 – $10,000 annually on lessons, tournament registrations, travel, and materials.” While it is not 100% mandatory for success, nearly all rising chess masters had been working with titled players for multiple years prior to exemplary achievement.

Effect of Technology on Chess ProdigiesWhile improvements in genius creation techniques have raised the global Prodigy Per Capita (PPC?!) rate and parents have become more financially and emotionally supportive of their rising stars, there is one more significant factor in this equation – technology. Google Translate wasn’t available in the 50s and 60s, so Fischer taught himself how to read Russian so that he could study recently published games and annotations in Russian chess magazines. Not only does Chessbase 11 with the Mega Update maintain a database of nearly 5 million games, you can use 4 different and highly powerful chess engines (simultaneously!) to analyze technical perfection. The invention of the internet and relevant technologies have made information sharing immediate, and the development of young chess players has been exponentially impacted.

No Substitute For Hard Work

There are a plethora of contributing factors to the development of chess genius at a comparatively young age – and that “young age” is decreasing daily. Biological predisposition and technology have definitely accelerated the learning curve, however an intensively favorable environment yields the most effective results. The true secret to success is theoretically simple yet operationally difficult: Long Hours of Hard Work.